Teeth scraped his pulse point, and Ryzen’s entire body locked. The rune beneath her lips blazed so hot it should have hurt—it didn’t. Pleasure ripped through him in its place, sharpand electric, radiating from that single point of contact to the base of his spine.
His hips jerked. Involuntary. Shameful. His stav was buried inside her and every nerve ending was screaming, and the wet heat of her around him was—
Stars.
Nothing in his centuries of existence had prepared him for this.
He’d trained in combat since adolescence. Had mastered nine spirit daggers through sheer stubborn will when most Verya manifested one or two. He’d survived the fall of his people’s government, the scattering of the refugees, the severing of his twin bond. He had endured things that would have broken lesser warriors.
Selena ground against him, and every shred of that hard-won discipline scattered like ash.
She made a sound—low, throaty, a moan that vibrated against the rune at his throat—and through the bond he felt what she felt: the thick stretch of his stav inside her, the textured drag of his runes against her inner walls, the heat building low in her core like a star gathering mass before ignition.
Wrong. This was wrong. His people had outlawed this for generations. Warriors had been executed for lesser violations. The merging of spiritforces was forbidden—dangerous—
She rolled her hips. A slow, devastating grind that pulled a sound from his chest he didn’t recognize.
Wrong and right. So terribly, impossiblyright.
He found her hips. Gripped. Not carefully this time—hard enough to anchor himself, because the alternative was losing control entirely, and he was barely holding the edges together as it was. She arched into his grip and twisted her fingers in his hair, tugging his head back to expose his throat.
She kissed him there. Open-mouthed. Hot.
His runes ignited in a cascading chain—throat to chest to abdomen to the base of his stav—and the room blazed emerald. Her golden spots pulsed in answer, fuchsia and bright against her bare skin, and the sight of them flaring forhimsent something possessive and primal surging through his blood.
He hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected the hunger. The greed. The desperate, clawing need to make her feel what he was feeling—to give back even a fraction of the pleasure she was tearing from him with every roll of her hips.
Through the bond, her thoughts pressed against his.
The last star in my constellation.
His breath seized.
She wanted him. Not as obligation. Not as transaction. Not as a weapon to be wielded or a tool to be used—all the ways the Verya had treated spiritforce bonds for generations. She wantedhim. The fractured warrior with the dead twin bond and the grief he couldn’t bury.
She saw all of it. Every broken piece. And she wanted him anyway.
He wrapped his arms around her—pulling her flush against his chest, burying his face in the curve of her neck. She smelled like warmth and something floral he couldn’t name. Her heartbeat hammered against his, their pulses tangling the way their spiritforces were tangling, and when she whisperedyes, like that, just like thatagainst his ear, the last thread of his restraint snapped.
Ryzen steadied her rocking.
With both hands gripping her hips—firm, deliberate—she stilled above him, panting, her eyes dark and questioning. He held her gaze. Let her see the decision forming behind his own.
Then he pulled her down. Slowly. Until she was fully seated, his stav buried to the root, the pressure of her inner walls clenching around him almost unbearable.
Her mouth fell open. No sound. Just breath.
He pressed his forehead to hers.
Emerald met gold.
The bond detonated.
His spiritforce surged forward—not a trickle, not a cautious offering, but a flood. It crashed into her golden web andmerged—his emerald braiding through her existing threads, finding the spaces between her bonds and filling them, sinking into the foundation of her consciousness until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.
Her arousal became his. His became hers. A feedback loop that compounded with every heartbeat—his pleasure amplifying hers, hers magnifying his, both building toward something that felt less like climax and more like detonation.
His body responded.
